Description: If Global and Transnational Sociology (GTS) has reoriented our understanding of social relations across space, it has been less attentive to social relations over time. Yet “globalization” and “transnationalism” are not new. They extend far back to the age of formal empires. And current transnational forms or processes have emerged from complex histories of social conflict, struggle and power. In an effort to help overcome the “presentism” of GTS, this session highlights papers that put global and transnational forms, processes and relations in historical perspective. Papers historicize current transnational flows, forms and processes and elucidate differences between past and present transnational relations.

Description: Much has been written about methodological nationalism—taking for granted that the world is and always will be organized around discrete nation-states. Many of the analytical and conceptual categories we use are permeated by these assumptions. But what would we see if we looked beyond the nation-state both analytically and programmatically, by connecting climate change in Calcutta to climate change in California, gang violence in El Salvador to gang violence in Los Angeles, or high infant mortality rates in Mexico with similarly poor health outcomes in New York City? This invited panel asks key scholars to re(consider) and revisit traditional understandings of race, gender, labor, economic production and social movements by thinking outside the nation-state box.

5. JOINT RECEPTION with Cultural Sociology and Sociology of Development Sections at Palais des congrès de Montréal at 7:30.

6. Section on Global and Transnational Sociology. Cultural (Re)Imaginings of the World (cosponsored with Section on Sociology of Culture)

Description: This panel is about the role of culture and cultural institutions in (re) imagining the world. One out of every seven people in the world today is an international or internal migrant who moves by choice or by force. People live transnational lives but the social contract between citizen and state is not. This panel explores where the cultural building blocks come with which to imagine a world in which nations do not necessarily stop at their borders; to forge new understandings of citizenship, identity and belonging; and to create new institutions that respond more effectively to our world on the move.